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His unfinished business includes the finalizing of landmark rules by the Bureau of Land Management governing fracking for natural gas and oil on public lands.

Salazar initially predicted that the rules would be finished by the end of 2012, but that has been pushed back to sometime this year to allow the department to review an estimated 170,000 comments.

The draft rule proposed in May would require companies to get approval before fracking a well, but it wouldn’t require them to disclose the chemicals they inject into the ground until after the process is complete. It is unclear whether Salazar’s timing for leaving the department will allow him to stay in office until that rule is finished.

The BLM rule would cap a rich and controversial legacy for Salazar in his four years at the department.

The department’s response to the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster — and the months-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that followed — drew praise from environmental groups for leading to an overhaul of the federal government’s much-maligned oversight of offshore drilling.

The spill helped spur Salazar to announce a transformation of the scandal-ridden Minerals Management Service into three agencies, separating oversight over permit approvals, royalty collection and environmental and safety standards. Salazar had already been contemplating a significant reorganization of the MMS in response to a scandal the administration inherited involving sex, drugs and illegal gifts, along with criticism that the agency was not sufficiently collecting federal royalties.

Salazar’s department also imposed a temporary moratorium on offshore drilling permits after the spill, drawing condemnation from industry groups, congressional Republicans and oil-state Democrats. They also accused Interior of slowing down permit approval even after the formal halt ended.

Salazar has also wrestled with Shell Oil’s longtime efforts to expand drilling in Arctic waters off Alaska. He told the department’s Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee just last week that he was never really comfortable with the company’s plans but was withholding judgment about Shell’s recent troubles, including an accident that grounded one of the company’s Arctic drilling rigs on New Year’s Eve.

“There is a troubling sense I have that so many things went wrong,” Salazar told the advisory committee. Though the department granted Shell permits for limited preparatory activities in the Arctic, Salazar said the department rebuffed Shell’s requests to drill for oil last year as the company suffered “multiple mishaps” in the region.

This underscores the fine line Salazar has had to walk in response to heightened environmental activism fueled by events like Deepwater Horizon and Shell’s push in the Arctic, as well as the defensive posture President Barack Obama and his administration have taken to deflect GOP criticism that it is not doing enough to spur domestic oil and gas production.